Remembrance Day

‘Very like being sacked crushed his hopes,’ someone remarked. ‘Don’t forget young Lamb were on the verge of matrimony.’

‘Which is a form of suicide,’ old Wilkes remarked slyly. Everyone laughed.

‘What’s this about suicide?’ Tebbutt asked, suddenly recalling Jean Linwood’s remark over the phone.

‘They say Tom Squire found him himself, barely cold, hanging there from a metal beam in the store, among all the crates. Just this morning, it was. A terrible thing to do to yourself, and this young girl he was about to marry from over North Walsham way.’

They all put on solemn Sunday faces and shook their heads before taking another drink.

The landlady, who had been polishing glasses and listening behind the bar, said in her smoky voice, ‘You gentlemen want to get your story straight. As I was told by someone who knows, Mr Billy Lamb did not kill himself because he lost his job. He didn’t even know he was to be declared redundant.’

Her statement was immediately challenged, but she went on unperturbed, resting her fists on her counter as if prepared to take them all on in physical combat if necessary. ‘Reason he done what he did was because the girl, Margy Sulston, who once worked for my cousin at the Ostrich, threw him over. Margy’s quite a decent girl – no chicken, mind you – and as I understand it she couldn’t put up with some of Mr Lamb’s obnoxious habits.’

‘Such as?’ Craske asked.

‘I’m not one to gossip,’ said the landlady with finality, turning away to polish another glass.

To ease himself into the company, which had not yet settled down properly, Tebbutt went over to the counter and bought everyone a round of bitter. They all drank it, except for old Craske, who was reckoned strange for sticking to cider, and Georgie Clenchwarden, who preferred ginger beer shandy.

Swallowing their pints, the company cheered up and began to tell stories of the unfortunate Billy Lamb. The only man there who knew him at all was Pete Norton, a dark-complexioned brickie and plasterer in his forties who worked for a Fakenham builder. He was soon holding them spellbound with details of Lamb’s sex life.

‘There’s a girl works in Boots as I took out a time or two. She’d been with Billy Lamb when he was working in the DIY. She reckoned as he had a problem. Some problem it was too. Seemed Billy was keen enough to get it in but he couldn’t stand the sight of women.’

They all roared with laughter, agreeing he certainly had a problem.

‘So what he done, he borrowed a sheet of hardboard out the DIY, and he’d stick that between them, so’s he could just see her legs and twot, and the rest of her was covered. Bit like screwing a fence, if you ask me.’

This revelation caused much discussion, some debating how long a girl would put up with such treatment, others dismissing the story as a complete fabrication, though later agreeing that nothing to do with sex could be either believed or disbelieved. Only Georgie Clenchwarden, reputed lover of Pauline Yarker, said nothing, sitting back on his bench with his shandy, smiling and listening over the top of his glass.

The Bluebell was a curious pub, with a collection of ornamental shoes on display upstairs. Tebbutt felt himself to be something of a curio in this company, displaced rather like the old shoes.

He took a certain interest in the hollow-chested young Georgie Clenchwarden, whose reported exploits with Mrs Yarker had earned him the sack. This crestfallen lad, who squirmed when he caught Tebbutt’s eye on him, lived over in Saxlingham with a decrepit aunt.

Tebbutt had wondered idly how so insignificant a youth as Georgie could bear a resonant name like Clenchwarden, guessing the family had come down in the world, much as he had himself; this he later found to be the case. In the eighteenth century, the Clenchwardens had owned a large house and estate the other side of Hartisham. Captain Toby Clenchwarden had been a compulsive gambler. One night, playing cards with a group of cronies that included a novelist and pamphleteer, he had staked his mansion on a hand at brag – and lost. The novelist won.

After which, Clenchwarden had ridden his mare back to Hartisham at dawn and roused his wife – so it was reported – with the cheering words, ‘Get up, you sloven, it’s the poorhouse for you today!’

The novelist had taken over on the following morning. The two men, so the story went, shook hands at the gates, one going, one coming.

Since then, it seemed, the Clenchwardens had never lived more than a stone’s throw from the poorhouse.

The company at the Bluebell was three or four pints along the way when in came Yarker with Pauline. Yarker had abandoned his Wellingtons for a pair of trainers – his way of smartening up. Pauline dressed in a common way, in a tight red satin dress which the men admired; as the men often agreed among themselves, she was welcome as the lone female in their group because she had good big tits on her. Pinned over these assets was a white carnation from the garden centre. She wore large bronze earrings made in an obscure country which rattled when she laughed.

Yarker bought them all a round of beer and sat down next to Tebbutt. Clenchwarden sank back on his bench, unwilling to catch his ex-employee’s eye, and tried to drown himself in his shandy.

‘I done well this afternoon,’ Yarker told his employee, genially. ‘Bought a whole load of furniture off of an old girl Dereham way who didn’t know no better. Drove it round to a mate of mine in King’s Lynn and sold it all for ten times as much. Well, eight or nine. Not bad for one afternoon, hey, bor?’

‘Who was that then, Greg?’ asked Burton.

‘Woman name of Fox, whistles when she talks, looks at you out of one eye, keeps an old dog who smells like a bit of used toilet paper.’

The ferret man laughed heartily. ‘That’s my missus’s aunt, Dot Fox. Funny thing happened to her some years back when she was married. She used to live over Happisburgh way, woke up one morning and found her back garden had fallen over the cliff. Apparently she’d been drinking so heavy the night before, she slept through one of the worst storms on the coast for twenty years. What was funny, was her husband Bert had gone out in his nightshirt to see to the chickens, what they kept in the garden shed, and he went over the cliff edge with the rest of ’em. Three in the morning, it was.’

Everyone present roared with laughter. The ferret man followed up his success with a postscript. ‘They found Bert washed up on Mundesley beach a week later, they did, still wearing his nightshirt. Old Dot Fox kept that nightshirt for years as a souvenir. She’s probably still got it, ’less you bought it off her, Greg.’

More laughter, and more drink called for.

Yarker said to Tebbutt, when they were comfortable, ‘You know that line of poplars where you been digging this week? Me and Pauline been thinking. They’re getting on a bit, must be ninety year old, and poplars don’t last that long. We reckon they best come down.’

Tebbutt frowned. ‘They look all right to me. They aren’t that old, are they?’

‘Ah, I can see the notion ent very poplar with you,’ Pauline said, leaning revealingly forward and bursting with laughter at her pun. Soon the whole table was laughing and making puns about trees. I knew a gell but she was a bit of a beech. I ent going to die yet ’cause I ent made no willow.

It was quite an uproarious evening. The suicide was soon forgotten.

Old Craske was unfolding a familiar tale about how, when he was a lad, he had seen a naked woman run through the village with a dog on a lead, and maybe it was a ghost or maybe it wasn’t.

Tebbutt felt an impulse like lust blossom in him. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he announced to the company. ‘When I was in Birmingham, I knew a man by the name of Cracknell Summerfield. A real rough diamond. He made a packet of money at one time or another. I used to go down to this place near London, near Heathrow, where he gave lavish dinners for his clients.

‘Cracknell dealt in swimming pools in a big way. Mind, this was before the Obnoxious Eighties. This time I was down at his place, he was negotiating a deal with some Kuwaitis. There were three of them to dinner, very polite in lounge suits. They were going to finance hotels, Cracknell was going to build the pools and do the landscaping. I was going to print all the prospectuses and brochures. There was also a pretty young duchess there.’

‘Now comes the sexy bit,’ said Yarker, winking.

‘The duchess had a contract to supply all the internal decor of these Kuwaiti hotels. Worth millions. She’d begun the evening very off-hand with everyone, but we’d all had a lot of champagne. She was on Cracknell’s right. His wife was on his other side.’

Am I to go on with this lie? Tebbutt asked himself, but already he heard his own voice continuing the tale.

‘At the end of the meal, Cracknell suddenly turns to the duchess and says, “Show us your quim”, just like that. Instead, she jumps up, pulls off her clothes, every last stitch, and climbs up on the table. There she dances a fandango among the plates, naked as the day she was born, and a sight more attractive.’

Mutterings all round from the company, until Pauline asked, ‘What did the Kuwaitis do?’

‘Oh, they all thought it was a normal part of English home life.’

‘You Brummies had a rare old time,’ Yarker said, enviously.

After closing time, the drinkers staggered into the night air. Langham lay about them, quiet and serious, with the great stone shoulder of the church looming darkly nearby. They stood outside the pub, in no hurry to say goodnight to each other.

Offering to give Tebbutt a lift home, Yarker flung a heavy arm round his shoulders and propelled him in the direction of his car. He ignored Tebbutt’s protestations that he preferred to walk. As soon as her husband’s back was turned, Pauline Yarker grabbed young Georgie Clenchwarden and planted a big kiss on his lips.

The drink had given the lad courage. Returning the kiss, he grabbed as much of her as he could. Someone cheered. In the dark, lit only by the light from the pub windows, in the middle of the road, the two danced slowly together. The others made way for them, muttering encouragingly. ‘Git in there, Georgie boy, it’s yer birthday!’ Slowly they gyrated, while Pauline sang ‘I am Sailing’ into Clenchwarden’s ear.

Turning at the car, Yarker saw what was happening. A kind of war cry escaped him. He rushed forward. Warned by the roar, Clenchwarden let go of Pauline and started to run in the direction of Blakeney, yelling for help as he did so. Burton, the ferret man, with a wit quicker than anyone would have attributed to him, started up his stinking motorbike and ran it between Yarker and his quarry. A swearing match started. The landlady appeared and begged them to be quiet. Tebbutt took the opportunity to escape.

He marched home in a cheerful frame of mind. Though darkness had fallen, the ambience of a summer’s sunset lingered, with a legacy of honeysuckle fragrance. Bats wheeled about the church where, in a few hours, a congregation would be gathering. A harmony of slight noises rose everywhere, from farm and field, comprising the orchestral silence of a Norfolk night. By the entrance to a lane, he halted to urinate under a tree, listening to a leaf fall within the circumference of the branches. He plucked another leaf, pricking himself in so doing. Holding it woozily before his eyes, he made out its sharp outline, with a green heart rimmed by yellow; without being able to determine the colours, he could distinguish their difference. It was a leaf of variegated holly.

‘That’s right, that’s the ticket,’ he said aloud, ponderously. ‘That’s life right enough. Variegated. Very variegated.’

He was impressed by his own wit, and sober enough to stand for a minute listening to the night about him. Even at this distance from the coast, the presence of the sea could be felt, calming, chastening.

That story of the dancing duchess, he reflected, had been an invention to make his past life seem more exciting than it was – to others, but to himself above all. The truth was, Parchment had always been a slog. His uncle had seen to it he was underpaid. He knew Cracknell Summerfield, but no dancing duchesses. Well, you had to make what you could of the moment, and no harm had been done.

Truth was, he rather despised the company in the Bluebell, and despised himself for going there so regularly.

When you think about it, they’re always running down women. What’s the matter with them? Is that just an English thing? Or maybe none of them have had my luck in finding a Ruby in their lives.

It’s impossible to see how things will get better for us. I’m not likely to find a better job. Not at my age.

But at least I’ve got Ruby …

I suppose some would say I’ve made a mess of my life, seeing the family business go bankrupt; the economic climate was mainly to blame for that, but I realize I shouldn’t have trusted the word of a liar and a crook. There were danger signs. I ignored them. I was dazzled by all his money …

Perhaps I’m attracted to liars. I hated being told always to tell the truth when I was a kid because I could see even then how adults were terrible liars and dissemblers.

Still, you can’t say life’s a complete cock-up, he told himself complacently as he slouched down the country road, listening to the echo of his own steps. I had the savvy to marry Ruby.

Shows I know what’s what. First time I set eyes on her. That day she came into the works I was in a bad temper – can’t remember what about now. She brought those samples over from Dickinson’s. I hardly glanced at her and made some crappy remark about the colours. And she answered me so nicely, not at all put out.

So then I looked up. There she was. Neat and bright and slender. So slender, and with a playful air I still catch in her sometimes. You couldn’t really say it was love at first sight, but certainly I took a shine to her there and then. Escorted her to the door, in fact. She was wearing sandals. Watched her going down Bridge Street, thought – oh, what a real darling of a girl she was. I remember it so well, standing at that door. It had been raining; the pavements shone.

Those first impressions have never left me, never have. I was going with Peggy Barnes at the time – let’s see, of course that was the year I traded in my old Triumph for my first car – but I slung her up. In a rather rotten way, sad to tell. Unfeeling sod, I was. It was Ruby awoke tender feelings in me. Maybe the blokes at the Bluebell never had anything like that.

By ringing Ruby’s firm, I got her name. Ruby Silcock. She was engaged to a chap in the tax office, what was his name?, but she agreed to have a milk shake with me in the lunch hour.

Time I’d got to the bottom of that glass, I knew I was mad about her – I didn’t tell her so, of course. Not then. Didn’t want to scare her.

He peered back into the past, recalling how he’d been late back to work that afternoon, so that his uncle had grumbled.

Then we were meeting again. Then she let me take her to the Saturday hop. Oh, to feel that body against mine, to look into her eyes, to move with her!

There was always something restrained about Ruby. Withdrawn, do I mean? Not sexually, mentally. Still is. Not a chatterbox, a blabberer, not like Peggy Barnes, thank God. A girl who can keep a confidence.

Nearly home. You did well then, matey. Not such a ditherer in that instance.

I walked on a sea of thistledown when I found she had a little warmth for me. Happy in a hundred ways. My mind and heart were full of her like being crammed with flowers. Oh, yes, Ruby, darling … how you haunted me, possessed me!

She rang me one day – we’d known each other about three weeks – to say she’d broken off her engagement. Alex was his name. She never told me then how she did it or what happened. It was just off.

Oh, the passion of those days! Me, whose idea of foreplay was to drag my pants down – I was a fast learner. You could never feel that way twice in a lifetime, could you? I sometimes think it’s all gone, then back it comes. We lived in a dream, didn’t know ourselves.

Amazing how it’s lasted. Oh, when I saw her naked … I could have eaten scrambled egg out of her darling armpits.

Well. Ruby, love, pissed though I am, I have to say you make my life worth while. You’re my religion. The Bible.

It wasn’t all lovey-dovey. Christ, was I a fool! When I first met her younger sister, Joyce, I kidded myself I fancied her more. Some kind of madness, just because she was the snappy dresser. Silly bugger. Ruby caught me kissing her. What a row we had! She gave me such a clout! Naturally I was all bull and rubbish, all the time thinking I’d shat on my chips as far as she was concerned. Women know how to stage-manage these things.

That’s long enough ago. We soon made it up. Then when Jenny was coming along, we decided we’d better get married. Just as well. Without a contract, she’d have left me, the way Cracknell Summerfield’s wife left him …

What’m I saying? ’S balls. She’d never do anything like that. Too loyal – it’s part of not being a blabbermouth. She’s a good ’un, is Ruby, a real good ’un. Better missus than any of that lot have got. I don’t think I could face life without her.

I wonder how long it is since we went to a dance? ‘Softly, Softly, Come to Me’ – that was our tune.

He attempted to sing the song aloud, but had forgotten the words, could only remember ‘… and open up my heart.’

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